Various ramblings and musings on gardening, agriculture, food and related subjects.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Plant Delights Nursery

A particularly delicious Trillium underwoodii form.

Tony Avent's Plant
Delights Nursery near Raleigh in North Carolina is legendary. 20,000
plus taxa. Primarily for the huge range of plants of course, but also
for its display garden, its whacky sculpture and provocative,
hate-mail-generating cartoon catalogue covers. Plant Delights shows
that it is possible to stand out againt the herd and run a successful
business selling a huge range of plants, many of them distinctly slow
to grow.

Asarum takoi 'Roundabout'

Organisation is key
here; everything is incredibly tidy, and very well-labelled. With an
emphasis on woodland species, you can wander around, see and
photograph more new plants in a couple of hours than many would
believe possible. Researchers get involved too – for them the
meticulously labelled clumps of innumerable geographic and other
forms of plants are perfect material.

One of several dry berms, mostly but not entirely for dry land stuff.

“I'm very keen on
ex situ conservation” says Tony, “although everyone bangs on
about conserving plants in their place”. He has a point, habitat
destruction can wipe out a rare variant of a species out overnight,
but well-labelled collections in a protected location like this, will
ensure survival. What's more, the public display of such a vast array
of biodiversity is powerfully educational in its own right.

The soil here is
very sandy, very acid, and was stripped of its nutrients by a century
plus of tobacco farming (this is the greediest of crops). Wood mulch
is used for the paths, and as it rots it gets shovelled onto borders,
so steadily building up the humus content. Apart from some berms of
imported soil and gravel, largely used for dry habitat plants, little
effort is made to provide special soil conditions for plants; Tony is
adamant that one size pretty well fits all here, he stabs a finger at
an agave sitting next to an azalea on one of the berms to prove the
point.

These are Rohdea.

The whole, ten acre
plus, site is managed as a rain garden, so as little water is allowed
to run off as possible, and all water from the greenhouses (the only
environment in which synthetic fertilizers are used) is cleaned by
running through beds of wetland vegetation.

Water detention is a part of the nursery's rain garden approach to water management

I was there
frustratingly early in the year. Trilliums were just beginning to
show, and they illustrate perfectly Tony's passion for genetic
diversity, with vast numbers of distinct forms on display, and
thousands of seedlings coming up in the glasshouses. With their often
exquisite leaf markings and mysteriously-coloured flowers, these are
the ultimate collector plants. The US south-east is a major centre of
diversity for them.

This is a floating island made from old drinks bottles, gently moving round the largest pool in the wind.

Natural
biodiversity may be the central passion, but Tony also oversees a
number of breeding programmes to improve the plants available to
gardeners; primarily with Epimedium, Baptisia and Hellebore. “With
hellebores” he says, “we practice redneck breeding, just putting
together groups of plants we want to cross, isolated from others, and
let the bees get on with it.”

I can't wait to get
back at another time of year.

Trillium maculatum

Episode Seven of Dig, Plant and Bitch, the world's only soap opera for gardeners is now available.Iris stakes her claimFor years, Iris and Johnny Dalton have rather treated the almost-abandoned walled garden at Mere Castle as their own territory. Now aware that the Watkins-Smythes are thinking of renting it out, Iris decides to take matters into her own hands. Elsewhere, garden designer Sebastian Gilling-Jones is discovering that being a TV gardening personality pays a heavy price; nurseryman James Treasby increasingly feels like he is running a remedial class in basic horticulture, the Watkins-Smythes and their rivals, Wayne and Petunia Martin are playing a war of nerves over supplies of cakes for their respective tea-rooms, while Petunia makes a discovery that might be good news for local connoisseur gardeners, but will not be welcomed at Treasby’s Plants of Distinction.

About Me

Garden writer and researcher, lecturer and teacher, based in the England/Wales border region. An occasional designer of plantings for gardens and public spaces.Other interests, and subjects for occasional publication are agriculture, food politics and environmental issues. Chiefly known for promoting naturalistic and sustainable planting design, I am a believer in design and decision-making based on science and evidence – so I have not signed up to organic jihad. And - lot of globe-trotting doesn’t stop me gardening myself either!
(pic. credit Andrea Jones)

Irish Gardens TourDo come and join us, organised in conjunction with Irish gardener Frances MacDonald, based on Dublin and Cork. Send a an email if interested and I'll send you more details, price etc.

Gardens Illustrated is now available to download from the App store and iTunes

The Garden at Montpelier Cottage

Pictures of the garden through the year are now available here.

There's a lot more about what I do and lots of useful information and links on my website: www.noelkingsbury.com

COME STAY WITH US!

We are now doing Bed and Breakfast by arrangement, in the guest room of the Pavilion with a verandah overlooking the garden. Continental breakfast served in room. Complete privacy. 5 miles from the second-hand book town of Hay-on-Wye, on the Hereford Way and near Offa’s Dyke long distance footpaths. £60 per night. More info. and pictures here. Enquiries to: josephine.eliot@gmail.com

At home in the wild garden.

Research on Long term Plant Performance

Food Programme - Radio 4

Talking about the seeds behind our food

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Welcome to the garden....

This blog is a place for observations, thoughts and opinions that occur to me as a gardener, horticultural journalist, researcher and commentator on the garden and landscape scene. And sometimes on the food and agriculture scene too.... when, you should be warned, I sometimes express unfashionable thoughts.

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I am now teaching an online gardening course with MyGardenSchool. Find out more by clicking on the picture

Check out the world's first soap opera for gardeners. Available as an Amazon e-book.

I'm now doing e-books.

I am now publishing e-books through Amazon, for Kindle, smartphones, iPads etc. There are currently three available, two based on collections of writings for Hortus magazine, from the early 2000s, and one which is an interview with Beth Chatto. Click here for Amazon North America or Amazon UK.

En Francais.

Interview

In February I went to Switzerland to do a lecture for the Swiss Hardy Plant Society (rather quaintly called the Swiss Friends of Perennial Plants). Here is the original English version of an interview he did with me. (you can see German and French above). Merci à Xavier Allemann.